Aggregator

Austria and Algeria played to a thrilling 3-3 draw Saturday night in what amounted to a win-win result in their World Cup group-stage finale.

Lionel Messi, the leader in this tournament with six goals, was among nine Argentina starters changed from the previous game.

Fiston Mayele was also on target in a dramatic second-half comeback as Congo joined Cape Verde as another surprise qualifier for the round of 32.

English revelers turned Manhattan into West Britain on Saturday, packing local pubs to celebrate a 2-0 World Cup victory over Panama. 

"John Bolton, a very dumb, unbalanced, and unskilled former representative of the United States of America, just pleads guilty!"

Flash flood warnings were in effect Saturday for parts of Kentucky and Indiana amid heavy rainfall, according to the National Weather Service.

A substantial emergency response was triggered Saturday after a Boston duck boat overturned near a Cambridge boat ramp, leaving six people injured.

The Shooting In The Strait Ain't Over, But...

Authored by Larry Johnson via Sonar21.com

A little over a week since the US and Iran signed the MoU, some ships that had been trapped in the Persian rushed to travel through the corridor, with many trying to use an alternative route on the southern side of the Strait along the Omani coast. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) had coordinated this alternative routing with Oman - hugging the UAE and Musandam Peninsula coastline, avoiding the central passage that Iran had mined. This route was significant because it bypassed Iran’s designated corridor entirely, which ran closer to Iranian territorial waters.

However, Iran and Oman agreed on a new framework (joint working group) for the future administration of the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, June 24, 2026. The two countries agreed to establish a joint working group between their foreign ministries to discuss:

• Future navigation rules and administration of the strait.
• Services provided (e.g., safety, pilotage).
• Associated costs (in accordance with international standards).

Both emphasized their sovereignty over their territorial waters in the strait.

The naval arm of the Revolutionary Guard issued a warning Thursday against using the new route. In a statement carried by Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency, naval officials said the route was established without notice or coordination with Iran, calling it “unacceptable and completely dangerous.” According to the IRGC:

The only authorized route for passing through the Strait of Hormuz is the one declared by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Vessel traffic outside these routes is extremely dangerous and prohibited. Violators will be dealt with.”

The day before, the Guard had threatened one tanker over the radio, with a soldier warning “You are in range of my missiles and maybe (I) fire on you,” according to the private security firm Ambrey.

Iranian military, file image

On Thursday the Ever Lovely, a Singapore-flagged ship operating in the fleet of Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine, attempted to transit the strait using a narrow channel near the coast of Oman in accordance with a route organized by the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) security monitor. The Ever Lovely was struck by a drone belonging to Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran allegedly shot at least four drones at ships traveling through the Strait on Thursday. One of those hit the upper deck of the Ever Lovely.

On Friday, the US attacked Iran in ‘response’ to strikes on the commercial vessel in Strait of Hormuz a day earlier:

Iran’s IRIB reported that an explosion was heard at 11:15 pm at the Taheroui pier in Sirik. A military source said the blasts were caused by a projectile hitting the pier area, adding that around five hours earlier, several warning shots had been fired from Sirik toward violating vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. Reports also indicated that two warning missiles were fired earlier from around Karpan toward the strait.

US Central Command said its forces carried out strikes against Iran on 26 June in response to Iran’s attack the previous day on the Singapore-flagged cargo ship M/V Ever Lovely as it exited the Strait of Hormuz along the Omani coast. CENTCOM said US aircraft targeted Iranian missile and drone storage sites and coastal radar positions after the vessel was hit by a one-way attack drone.

Although CENTCOM presented this as a powerful strike on Iran, and the US media trumpeted it as an act of major retaliation, the US response inflicted little damage and could reasonably be interpreted as a symbolic gesture rather than a punishing attack.

The IRGC Public Relations department issued the following statement:

Following the Israeli regime’s violation of the ceasefire in southern Lebanon, the treaty-breaking US regime also violated its commitments once again. Under various pretexts, including the transit of a vessel accused of navigating through an unauthorized route in the Strait of Hormuz, the US launched an airstrike against the coasts of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In response to this aggression, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy struck positions where the US terrorist military is stationed in the region. Under Article 5 of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, responsibility for regulating navigation through the Strait of Hormuz rests with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

However, the United States sought to violate this commitment by encouraging various parties to defy it. It received the necessary response, and the same will apply in the future. If the aggression is repeated, Iran’s response will be broader than this.

Instead of marking a return to war, this exchange of fire can best be categorize as military political theater. I believe that Iran, thanks to intel from the Russians or the Chinese, has learned that the US has issued orders that will initiate the return to CONUS of the aircraft, vehicles and troops that had been deployed to the region in preparation for the February 28 attack. Because of the limited damage inflicted by the US attack, I believe that Iran chose to respond in a limited fashion rather than escalate and run the risk of the US cancelling the redeployment order.

For now, Iran remains in control of the Strait of Hormuz and ships wanting to transit the Strait are adhering to Iran's new policy.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/27/2026 - 23:20

The Liberty, who’ve lost three of their last four games, are set to wrap up their four-game road trip Sunday against the Golden State Valkyries.

California is hitting Napa Valley's wine industry with another costly government mandate at one of the worst possible times.

Young Americans Expect To Buy A Home Later In Life (Or Not At All)

For decades, homeownership has been a key milestone of adulthood in the United States.

In recent years, however, the middle-class ideal of homeownership and suburban comfort, once an embodiment of the American Dream, has gotten out of reach for many families, as elevated home prices, high mortgage rates and a period of stagnant real wages have left many families unable to even consider it.

As Statista's Felix Richter shows below, only 25 percent of non-homeowners expect to buy a house in the next five years, according to Gallup – the lowest share since the question was first asked in 2013.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Among those aged 18 to 34, a key group of prospective buyers, intentions have also fallen sharply.

The share expecting to buy in the next five years dropped from 57 percent in 2013/2015 to 29 percent in 2025/2026.

At the same time, the share of non-owners who don’t see themselves buying a home in the foreseeable future has increased from 13 to 30 percent.

The rest expects to wait longer before buying a home, either to build up savings for a down payment or in hopes that prices and mortgage rates will come down from their current levels.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/27/2026 - 22:45

Despite a contract extension last month that would’ve kept Steve Clark as Scotland’s head soccer coach through the 2030 World Cup, he resigned.

A new analysis looked at all the stadiums across the country hosting World Cup 2026, with SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles scoring the worst overall for fan experiences.

Trump-endorsed Louisiana Rep. Julia Letlow defeated State Treasurer John Fleming in the state's Senate Republican primary runoff Saturday -- marking the latest display of the president's primary election pull.

Beijing's Trojan Horse Rolls Into Canada: National Security Expert Warns Carney's Chinese EV Deals Embeds Sabotage Risk

Submitted by The Bureau's Sam Cooper (emphasis our own), 

China keeps finding inventive ways to burrow into the West, and Canada's new appetite for Chinese electric vehicles may be the most consequential opening yet.

That is the warning at the center of a report published this week by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and written by Brenda Shaffer, an energy and national-security specialist who teaches at the United States Naval Postgraduate School.

China, she writes, "continues to find creative ways to infiltrate and influence the West," embedding in its exports the capacity to surveil citizens, disrupt transportation and ports, and trigger blackouts and grid damage.

Shaffer situates the electric-vehicle question inside a wider argument about hybrid warfare. China, Russia and Iran, she notes, have each written attacks on Western domestic energy infrastructure into their war doctrines, erasing the old line between the home front and the battlefield. Even brief disruptions to electricity or transit, she argues, could spread public panic and erode support for a distant conflict — the defense of Taiwan being the obvious test.

The cars began arriving in June, the product of a strategic partnership Prime Minister Mark Carney signed in Beijing in January. Ottawa cut its tariff on Chinese electric vehicles from 100 percent to 6.1 percent, opening an initial quota of roughly 49,000 vehicles in the first year. Carney has cast the imports as a low-cost route for Canadians switching to electric, and analysts cited by Shaffer expect Chinese brands to capture a fifth of the Canadian market.

Shaffer leans on an internal Public Safety Canada memo, obtained under access-to-information law, warning that opening the market to "high-risk vendors" invites connected cars that "collect significant amounts of data on Canadians, which can have intelligence value." Her account of the official response is withering. Asked how Canada would protect drivers, the chief of the defense staff, General Jennie Carignan, told reporters only that "we don't have a lot of Chinese vehicles so far," and Defense Minister David McGuinty said he would raise the question with base commanders.

The danger, in her telling, runs well past cars.

A congressional probe found hidden communications equipment inside Chinese-made cranes at major American ports; the same cranes are common in Canadian harbors, where Transport Canada began assessing the risk in 2023. More worrying still are solar power inverters — the devices that feed renewable energy into the grid — of which China supplies about 70 percent worldwide. American investigators have identified undeclared communication components inside some Chinese inverters that experts warn could be used to switch them off remotely and destabilize power grids.

Lithuania has banned Chinese inverters outright and the European Union has moved to bar them from public funding, while Canada, Shaffer writes, has imposed no comparable limits — even as the January partnership commits Ottawa and Beijing to deepen cooperation on solar, wind and battery storage.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's auto policy would prohibit Chinese-made vehicles from proximity to Canadian Forces bases and other sensitive or strategic infrastructure.

In Washington, where opposition to Chinese electric vehicles is one of the few genuinely bipartisan positions, President Donald Trump has called the deal a disaster for Canada, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Canada would live to regret it, and the U.S. ambassador, Peter Hoekstra, vowed the cars would never reach American roads: "We're not going to open the floodgates to have Chinese cars coming into the US from Canada."

Shaffer's alarm is echoed, from a different vantage, by Michael Kovrig, the former Canadian diplomat held in China for more than 1,000 days. In testimony to Parliament this spring, Kovrig described the deal as a "trifecta of risks" — structural dependence, unfair competition that erodes industrial capacity, and systemic pressure on government policy — and warned that the People's Republic "weaponizes technology, supply chains and market access" to force acquiescence to its agenda.

Commenting this week on his own testimony, Kovrig wrote on social media that opening Canada's market to Chinese electric vehicles "should be assessed not as a normal trade agreement, but as a tactical gamble that risks deep entanglement." The Chinese Communist Party, he wrote, "pours enormous resources into the sector to build scale and sustain overcapacity." He went on: "The pattern is to flood, consolidate and weaponize. We've seen China do this before with solar panels, steel, ships and drones, and EVs are now moving through the same stages in global markets."

The warnings have not slowed Carney's government, which is pressing ahead at full speed. Industry Minister Mélanie Joly spent much of last week in China, courting BYD, Chery, Geely and Shanghai Launch Automotive Technology to build electric vehicles on Canadian soil, and confirmed that the import quota will keep climbing — rising by 6.5 percent a year from 49,000 vehicles in 2026 to roughly 67,000 annually by 2031. Carney, caught on a hot microphone with Trump at the Group of Seven summit in France, defended the arrangement as "less than 3 per cent of our market, 49,000 cars," telling the president, "It's a cap, we capped, a hard line."

Beijing is pleased.

Geely Holding Group's Lotus-brand electric vehicles will reach Canada next month — the first such models sold under the 49,000-vehicle quota — China's ambassador to Canada, Wang Di, told Reuters on Friday. The cars would arrive, he said, "and they will be holding a ceremony when the cars are delivered in Montreal," a milestone in the trade pivot Carney has pursued to move Canada away from dependence on the United States.

On June 26, the Chinese Communist Party's state-run China Daily approvingly reported Canada's pledge to lift its exports to China by 50 percent by 2030. At a Canada Day reception at the Canadian embassy in Beijing, the mission's chargé d'affaires, Mark Richardson, called Canada "a stable, reliable partner — a partner that builds and values relationships for the long term," adding, "That includes with China." Of Carney's January visit, he said: "To say this has been a significant year for Canada–China relations would be an understatement. In many ways, it has been a turning point."

He noted that Canada had become a major energy exporter to China and observed that "the first shipment of Chinese-made electric vehicles has arrived in Canada under a new quota that was agreed in January."

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/27/2026 - 22:10

Long live the revolution!

Biden, who got pushed out of his reelection bid by fellow Democrats in 2024 following his debate disaster against Trump, defended his record and blasted his successor.

Sophie Cunningham claimed that WNBA players are targeting Caitlin Clark in the aftermath of Alyssa Thomas’ fist connecting with Clark's throat.

Iran says it launched a series of retaliatory strikes on US military assets in Kuwait and Bahrain Saturday night.

The clothes came off as the rubber hit the road at the World Naked Bike Ride in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, with hundreds of cyclists taking part in the body-baring cruise along city streets.